How to create business-building e-newsletters

Best-practice tips for providing info—not spam—and getting more work

 “We should do a newsletter.” We’ve heard that a lot from different clients over the years; who doesn’t want to do a newsletter? After all, it seems like a perfectly logical way to maintain top-of-mind awareness with clients and prospects while building your brand. And as postal mailings become ever less relevant, an e-newsletter becomes all the more enticing a prospect, because it’s so inexpensive. Often, it’s free.

So there are plenty of advantages for you to be gained by producing an e-newsletter (or even a paper/postal one, if you like). But before you take the plunge, consider the following best-practice tips—some more obvious than others—for making the phone ring and business grow:

Consider your audience. Notice a recurring theme? We could copy-and-paste “Consider your audience” for Step One of virtually every one of these how-to blog posts. The e-newsletter is no exception. There’s only one difference: anti-spam laws. You can include your clients and former clients and others you’ve interacted with, but be careful about hitting on total strangers. Consider using a service to get a vetted/legal list that suits your needs; here’s a good source you can check out.

What do they want to know? You can safely assume that your clients already have their go-to news sources/daily habits. What websites do they read? Who do they follow on Twitter? What news outlets do they turn to first? What industry publications do they read? Putting yourself in their place, what’s the kind of info they’re getting-but-not-getting from those sources? Give up? The answer is:

Your expertise. This is the key to a successful e-newsletter; it also happens to be the key to a successful blog (as we’d noted in our popular post: How To Promote Your Independent Consulting Business). It’s pointless for you to scour the news (no matter how specialized/arcane) and rehash it to your clients and prospects; that doesn’t add any value. What adds value is your take on the news. What’s your opinion, as a thought leader? How would you “editorialize” on a news story that falls squarely within your domain expertise? This, incidentally, segues nicely to:

Develop a structure for your e-newsletter. You can do anything you want, but here’s a simple and easy suggestion for a basic structure: Open with a quick (one- or two-sentence) greeting, then dive into some quick bulleted stories. For stories in the news, you can write your own provocative “grabber” headline that entices the reader to want to learn your “take” on the story. Open with a one- or two-sentence summary of the actual news item itself, including a hyperlink to a good news source for the story. (Make sure it’s not a subscription-encumbered source; you don’t want to turn off your reader by taking them to a site they can’t access.) Then, simply write, say, 2-3 sentences with your opinion of the story. A generic example: “We like the way this is headed. While it may erect some higher barriers to entry for some, it actually ensures that you end up with a better product, thanks to the added scrutiny which this new regulation requires.” Get it? You can even italicize it, just like we did, so it’s even easier for the reader to visually pick apart your newsletter, and “skip to the good parts” for stories they already know about. (Here’s a sample of that basic format which we did for a client in Europe.)

Brag—humbly. Some of your “news” will be internal: e.g., you just landed a big overseas gig, or a recent client just scored a big win, thanks to your help. You can—and should—include these items (your readers may not learn about them otherwise, and they add credibility to your brand), but go easy on them. Consider the “greed test”: If you’re the reader, you want to ask yourself, “What’s in this for me?” It needs to be viewed through the lens of information that helps clients see the need for your services—not mere chest-pounding.

Keep it short. Most people will read this from a phone, tablet, or laptop. Don’t make them scroll too much; more importantly, don’t take up one more minute of their time than is necessary. Better to send out a half-page newsletter than a three-pager.

Create a publishing calendar. Of course, you can’t predict the news. (If you can, feel free to send us some good stock tips.) But that doesn’t mean you can’t create an editorial calendar. Look ahead to what’s coming up the rest of the year, in terms of events that will have meaning for your clients, such as big trade shows, holidays, elections, anniversaries of important events, etc. (Want a cheap trick? Go to the “Advertising” section of a trade journal you follow, and look up their editorial calendar. It’s probably posted online. You can look it over for any events that may have slipped your mind.)

Your calendar, naturally, must be flexible. You’ll be looking for pop-up opportunities (in the form of breaking news) and seize them as they come. But this way, you’ll be able to do a bunch of the work in advance, reducing the pressure on you for each newsletter.

Consider the frequency. This is a big decision, and a big commitment, which you need to make up front. Will your newsletter be weekly? Monthly? Daily (gasp!)? You need to balance 1) what you can actually produce, 2) how much/how often your clients want to hear from you, and 3) just how much newsworthy stuff is out there.

Make it pretty. Fortunately, there are lots of services out there today for laying out a very nice-looking e-newsletter, managing the lists and mailings, measuring response rates, and so on. Big players include ConstantContact, MailChimp, and iContact. Most offer their entry-level services for free. And once you create your first newsletter—picking out your fonts, colors, column layout, etc.—you can simply clone it/do a “Save as…” for all your future issues, which you can then lay out in minutes. It will simply be a matter of dropping in new text, links, and images.

Caveat call-to-action. Of course you want your e-newsletter to make the phone ring, or in-box chime (does yours chime? whatever). But don’t put in too much “call us” or “contact us” verbiage in your newsletter: spam filters often look for just that. Make the content itself the star; better that your clients take the effort to reach out to you than your hard work gets trapped in their junk folder.

Leverage. Got a new blog post? That’s newsworthy. Feature it in your newsletter and cross-link to it. Re-purpose the content for the “News” section of your website. Tweet that you’ve published a new newsletter—the goal, obviously, is not just to get more eyes on your content, but to get more people to sign up as subscribers.

Don’t stop. If you call your newsletter “The August Issue,” you’d better have one ready in September. Newsletters that sputter over time will actually backfire: rather than building your brand, they’ll make clients question your staying power and credibility.

Consider getting help. Done properly, an e-newsletter can be a great and cost-effective business-builder. But it requires work and commitment. Following the above best-practice guidelines will maximize your odds of success. But if the prospect seems daunting, consider feeding your thought-leading ideas to an expert writing source, and freeing up more of your time for core activities. Fortunately for you, we have the unique combination of consulting, marketing, and creative skills which have let us help independent consultants and boutique agencies to boost their billing for more than 15 years. Best of all, we’re fast, efficient, and surprisingly affordable, given the value we provide. Contact us right now and let’s talk about growing your business as quickly and productively as possible. 

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